Foster care and adoption; toddlers to young adults; it's all here-- faith and humor meet as this mom of four chronicles the joy and heartbreak of motherhood.

Friday, April 5, 2013

April, 2013: Frisbee

For our
family, the melting snow heralds in Frisbee season. Jacob is an Ultimate
Frisbee enthusiast, hopes to make the club team in college and has signed up
for a weeklong Ultimate Frisbee camp as soon as school ends. He learns new
Frisbee moves by watching You Tube and can rattle off the names of the world’s
premier players in the sport—and yes, Ultimate Frisbee is a sport with its own
governing body and premier players.

I did not
see this coming.

Jacob began
his athletic career with lots of variety as a young child-- baseball in the
spring; swimming and tennis in the summer; flag football, soccer or cross
country in the fall, and basketball and skiing in the winter. Table tennis was
his year-round indoor sport. I watched many of his early grade school games
with a toddler on my hip and a preschooler at my side. Taking Jacob’s younger
brother and sisters to watch his interminable little league games was
especially brutal. It was like taking them to church, but longer, without the
distraction of music, and with the hazard of foul balls.

While many
of my friends’ children eventually showed a special talent in one sport, and began
to specialize, joining club traveling teams, Jacob remained stunningly average
at every sport he tried. He enjoyed all of them, but didn’t have a true passion
for any of them. Even in high school, not good enough to play soccer or
basketball for Dominican, he continued to play on a rec soccer team one season,
and a parish basketball team the next. He played JV baseball for a couple of
years and then switched to tennis for junior and senior years—all while
occasionally playing dodgeball, ping pong and other random sports.

When Jacob
was introduced to Ultimate Frisbee in gym class and quickly signed up for a
Milwaukee Ultimate league, I was impressed with his initiative, but didn’t
think it would turn any more serious than any of his other sports.

Ultimate
Frisbee (actually known simply as “Ultimate” because Frisbee is a brand) is
played by two teams of seven on a football field. It is a fast-paced running
game with similarities to football and soccer. Teams try to score by passing
the disc to open teammates into the end zone. No contact, picks or screens are
allowed.

Jacob’s
athletic history of jack-of-all-sports fits perfectly with Ultimate. Few young
children are groomed to toss a Frisbee, and by college, the serious athletes
are off riding scholarships for their serious sports, allowing a medium athlete
like Jacob to have a shot at the ones below the radar.

But the element
of Ultimate that I appreciate the most—and fits the most for Jacob—is what the USA
Ultimate national governing board calls “The Spirit of the Game.” Strong
competition is encouraged, but should never get in the way of the joy of
playing.

Ultimate’s focus on their
trademarked Spirit of the Game is woven through the board’s official rules.
Recognizing it’s not enough to simply tell people to play fair, the national
governing body gives ten specific guidelines of how to play within the Spirit
of the Game. Their first point is the golden rule: “Treat others as you wish to
be treated.” Shortly thereafter, the
authors acknowledge that many athletes have thick skin, and amend the rule to:
“Treat others as you wish your mother to be treated.”

Point two tackles containing emotion under pressure
and point three explains the difference between good-natured heckling and
mean-spirited taunting. The ten points are so beautifully written and complete
that they could be a guide for any sport—indeed, for any activity in life—not
just Frisbee. “Be generous with praise,”
the governing body advises in their eighth point. “Compliment an
opponent on her good catch. Remark to a teammate that you admire his honesty in
calling himself out of bounds.” Perhaps the best direction is given as part of point six, titled
simply, “Breathe.” The guideline says, “After a hard foul or close
call, take a step back, pause, and take a deep breath. By giving yourself just
a bit of time and space, you will gain enough perspective to compose yourself
and concentrate on the facts involved.” The full document of The Spirit of the
Game reads like an inspiring homily.

In the The Spirit of the Game, I see
Jacob’s spirit, as well. A love of sport combined with a healthy sense of
competition-- wrapped in a perspective that running, passing, diving and
catching are fantastic parts of life, but shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Once
Jacob moves on to college, Bill and I will still have three other young
athletes in the home. We have almost another decade of dribbling and jumping;
bumping and hitting. Another decade of moving toward the Ultimate goal— The
Spirit of the Game.

About Me

Annemarie writes locally and nationally on foster care, adoption, parenting and spirituality. She is responsible for the content in At Home with Our Faith (circulation 80,000), which has won the First Place award in its category from the Associated Church Press for three consecutive years. Her Training Wheels column has appeared in the Milwaukee Catholic Herald since 2002 and most of these blogs appeared first in her Training Wheels column or as a chapter of her book, Discovering Motherhood (Ambassador Press, 2006). She is married to Bill, with four children (two biological, two adopted), and works in a job-share position at Johnson Controls as director of Corporate Programs in Diversity and Public Affairs.